The World of Warcraft community has quickly fallen in love with Warbands, and for good reason. It's one of those key quality-of-life improvements that seems impossibly small on the surface, particularly when announced alongside the towering Worldsoul Saga – three incoming expansions that are designed to drive the future of one of the best MMORPGs of all-time.
Improving upon the foundational design of an experience set to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2024 isn't easy – lord knows that Blizzard Entertainment has iterated and evolved World of Warcraft plenty in that time. Perhaps that's why something like Warbands has quickly enraptured legacy and lapsed players alike. An idea so good it's actually a little outrageous that we haven't received it already.
Speaking to Michael Bybee at BlizzCon 2023, the executive producer for World of Warcraft: The War Within – the opening chapter of the Wondersoul Saga, set to launch next year – he tells me that he doesn't just understand the enthusiasm from the community, he's right there with them. "I'm excited about transmog across characters. That's probably the thing I'm most excited about – followed by the shared Bank, which is incredible."
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Warband is an account-wide alt system which is designed to expand the potential of your created characters – easing friction of expanding your presence across Azeroth. When Warbands arrives in the 2024 expansion, it means that all of the characters registered to your Battle.net account will be able to more easily share in common achievements – allowing you to share Warbank Bank access, War Within Renown, Collections, Reputation, Transmog, and more between all your characters. It's a big change, and one which Bybee says is a big "value shift" for Warcraft as we look to its future.
"A lot of times when we roll out a feature, we're like: 'This is a feature and it's a whole new thing, and here's the package of it.' But the way I think about Warbands is that it's more of a value shift. We're communicating to players that, in the past, it was all about a single character on a realm, but with Warbands and some of the other changes we're making, we're removing barriers and committing to a set of features for the future."
Blizzard is being unusually transparent with the future of World of Warcraft, outlining the shape of the next three expansions. The key for the community, Bybee explains, is that by knowing the future direction of the franchise means that you should better trust that features like Warbands will be supported (and improved upon) for years to come. "That value shift is, I think, the most important thing. Because it means that players will understand that, as we continue to do stuff in the future, that this is going to continue to be a thing. That we as a team are saying that this is how we want World of Warcraft to work in the future, and that is exciting."
